Readers might recall my post about the exchange between U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Rep. Greg Murphy during the annual trade policy agenda hearing a few weeks back where Rep. Murphy said he thought Ambassador Tai was “too nice” to be a good negotiator for the United States.   As a follow-up to the commentary on the exchange, Kathleen Claussen and Wendy Li have sought to compare it to prior interactions between members of Congress and U.S. Trade Representatives (USTRs) at these sorts of hearings.  It turns out that “niceness” and especially “toughness” are traits that members of Congress frequently…
Continue Reading Nice v. Tough–One More Take

Jen Robbennolt, Jessie Bregant, and Verity Winship have been commenting on the Fox/Dominion settlement, linking it to their recent work on how the public perceives and understands settlement.  They suggest that for all that is notable about the settlement, including the record-breaking dollar amount, its non-acknowledgement acknowledgement, and its implications for media and democracy, public reaction to the settlement is consistent with what they have found about what the public infers abut responsibility from settlement, what people think about “winning” and “losing” in settlement, the reasons that people perceive for settling, and pubic desire for acknowledgement and apology. See what…
Continue Reading Robbennolt, Bregant, and Winship on the Fox/Dominion Settlement

This year the USNews rankings came out with little fanfare, or the fanfare was that they were on the cusp of being released and then weren’t for 6 weeks or more as they corrected their data.  And once they did come out, it seemed that no one noticed.  But others did not (tip of the cap Tax Prof Blog).  As you can see, there is noted movement at the top as the 15 year Ohio State / Pepperdine wrestling match for the top spot has ended with Harvard taking the crown.  And welcome to the top 5 Cardozo, the…
Continue Reading 2024 USNews ADR Specialty Rankings

In the category of “funny/cute stories about Chat GPT,” two offerings:
First, you may enjoy this article by Maxwell Strachan, “I Asked Chat GPT to Control My Life, and It Immediately Fell Apart.” The article begins:
Within minutes of my decision to hand my life over to AI, ChatGPT suggested that, if able, I should go outside and play with my dog instead of work. I had asked the chatbot to make the choice for me, and it had said that I should prioritize “valuable experiences” that contribute to my “overall well-being.” This instruction was welcome, as it was beautiful…
Continue Reading Yet Another Chat GPT Post

Last Wednesday’s Legal Educators’ Colloquium of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Annual Spring Conference, this year in Las Vegas, featured some wonderful panels on all things “ADR Law Prof.”
Besides reuniting in person with our fantastic community, I also spoke on a panel which focused on using ADR Skills as a law school leader. The panel also  featured Michael Colatrella (McGeorge) as moderator, and Deb Eisenberg (Maryland), Lydia Nussbaum (UNLV), and Lauren Newell (Campbell) as fellow panelists. 
I focused on ADR Skills I use when interacting with students in my role as Academic Dean. My role involves quite a…
Continue Reading What About Us? Leading in Law School Using ADR Skills

The word of the month for May is “akimbo.”
Akimbo is a description of a stance: arms and legs flung out haphazardly (or sometimes, less chaotically, hands on hips with elbows turned out). Something that’s akimbo is less controlled, less predictable, and less coordinated. It’s an unexpected juxtaposition of body and limbs.
Nominated for eight Tony awards this year is the musical Kimberly Akimbo, a story of a teenager with a rare genetic condition that has sped up her aging process. At the start of the musical, Kimberly Levaco is fifteen but looks much older (the actress playing Kimberly is…
Continue Reading May: Akimbo

I posted this on Facebook over the weekend but also wanted to share with our blog community as well:

For all the students and faculty with whom I’ve traveled to Israel over the years, I thought you’d be interested in the NYT Saturday profile of Justice Aharon Barak (linked here), explaining why protestors are in front of his house in response to the proposed judicial review changes in Israel and my recent visit with him.  (And here is a picture of students with Justice and Judge Barak in their backyard in 2015)

Just to remind you, if you have…
Continue Reading Visiting with Justice Barak

On June 27, 2023 , CPR Dispute Resolution will offer a training program, “Tech and ADR: New Ethical Concerns and ODR Standards” presented by Leah Wing of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst and Janet Martinez of Stanford Law School.
“The application of technology to dispute resolution has seen exponential growth in the shadow of the pandemic, particularly in the use of remote video conferencing. The disruptive nature of technology provides new opportunities for access to justice as well as new ethical issues for practitioners and processes. This workshop will explore case examples in light of…
Continue Reading Upcoming CPR Training: New Ethical Concerns and ODR Standards for Tech and ADR

As part of our new redesign for the blog (did you notice? ) we are going to try to post more regularly about journals in the field as the new issues are published.  With that in mind, I am delighted to announce the new issue of the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution.  Here is the table of contents below (and let me note proudly that the note from 3L Rachel Gershengoren has won a Cardozo award for best student article published in a Cardozo journal!)

Articles
Beyond the Toolbox: Values-Based Models of Mediation Practice-Robert A. Baruch Bush
A Proposal …
Continue Reading Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution–New Issue Out!

Thanks to Andrea Schneider, the Cardozo Journal on Dispute Resolution’s faculty advisor, and its editors, the Journal just published articles by Professor Robert A. Baruch Bush and me expressing differing perspectives about basic mediation theory.  I appreciate this opportunity to publish our perspectives and share them with readers.
Prof. Bush’s article is Beyond the Toolbox: Values-Based Models of Mediation Practice.  Mine is Real Mediation Systems to Help Parties and Mediators Achieve Their Goals.  I invite you to read both of them.
His article stimulated me to write my article, which systematically articulates ideas I have been developing for…
Continue Reading Bush’s and Lande’s Differing Perspectives of Mediation Theory

You may have read Rishi Batra’s (St. Mary’s) recent recap of the national round of the Representation in Mediation Competition a few weeks ago on this blog.  As Paul Harvey used to say, “And now for the rest of the story. . . .”
On the Thursday before the weekend of nationals, one of the ASU competitors for the national round fell ill and ended up in the emergency room.  He was in no condition to travel the next day, much less compete, so we scrambled to get someone to take his place and travel to San Antonio.  Once we…
Continue Reading Shout out to A.J. Bellido de Luna (St.Mary’s)

I posted my short article, The Deplorable Vanishing of Fox’s Trial, on the NYC-DR listserv, which prompted several responses including this one:
Given the magnitude of the settlement I question whether the judge imploring the parties to settle made much difference.  I do think the decisions on the summary judgment motion, which left open only the issue of malice probably did.  I respectfully suggest those decisions do protect and serve the public interest here.
This sequel, The Deplorable Vanishing of Fox’s Trial – Part 2, addresses these and other issues.  It elaborates why I think that the settlement…
Continue Reading The Deplorable Vanishing of Fox’s Trial-Part 2

I posted a short artice, Think DSD, Not ADR, which you may want to read.  Here’s the abstract.
This article argues that it is time for a paradigm shift in the way we define the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) field.  It suggests that the dispute system design (DSD) paradigm should succeed ADR.  ADR is an ever-expanding collection of distinct dispute resolution procedures.  By contrast, DSD offers a relatively fixed set of concepts and procedures that can be applied in virtually any context.
There is a lack of consensus about the name and definition of ADR, which reflects deep conceptual…
Continue Reading Think DSD, Not ADR